In a crypto robbery in Japan, hackers stole almost $100 million.

ByFaisal Chughtai | Published date:
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Hackers targeted the leading Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, Liquid, stealing almost $100 million (£73 million). Some of the company's digital currency wallets have been "compromised," according to the announcement. It is the second big cryptocurrency heist to occur in recent days.

Poly Network, a digital token network, was at the centre of a $600 million theft last week.

"We are sorry to announce that #LiquidGlobal warm wallets were compromised, we are moving assets into the cold wallet," the firm stated on Twitter.

'Warm' or 'hot' digital wallets are typically located online and intended to make it easier for users to access their cryptocurrencies, while 'cold' wallets are offline and more difficult to access, and therefore usually more secure.

Elliptic, a blockchain analytics company, said that approximately $97 million in cryptocurrencies had been stolen, with Bitcoin and Ethereum tokens among the loot.

Liquid said that it is tracking the stolen cryptocurrency flow and collaborating with other exchanges to freeze and retrieve the funds. Liquid, which was founded in 2014, is present in over 100 countries and serves millions of consumers worldwide.

According to CoinMarketCap statistics, it is one of the world's top 20 largest cryptocurrency exchanges by daily trading volumes. A hacker exploited a weakness in Poly Network's infrastructure last week and stole $600 million from the blockchain platform.

"The amount of money you have hacked is one of the biggest in defi [decentralised finance] history," stated Poly Network.

Since then, the hacker, known as Mr White Hat, has returned about $427 million of the assets. However, liquid is not the first Japanese cryptocurrency site to have been targeted by a big theft. MtGox, a Tokyo-based exchange, went bankrupt in 2014 after almost $500 million in bitcoin vanished, while Coincheck was hacked in a $530 million theft in 2018.

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